Birthing Pigs and Chickens

I have been out of the world for the past two days. I got some coffee and red wine, some simple food and locked myself in the studio. Dalkeith’s next top model is emerging, as is a piece going under the title Portrait of God with Broken Toys.

The process this time round has elements of formal orchestration, but – now that I have brought my head up for air – the memory of the past few days feels more like cooking a recipe. I have balanced raw ingredients, cooked them in process and pulled in seasoning to – hopefully – the right degree.

The violence is back into the sound and it feels, voluptuous, indulgent, purgative.

I have elected to extricate any organic evolution of ideas in this work. I need this to be forceful, singular, unanswerable. There is to be no iteration, no dialogue – just the pure emotional surge.

My wife returned home this evening and more or less brought me back from the two day trance. I played her a sample of Broken Toys and she said that her “goosebumps got goosebumps” when the first real sound surge fell into the mix. (Of course, this made me wonder whether I had accomplished something good or bad) To me, it sounded like the work of someone else. Like something that had always been in the world. Like something I had no part in making – the way I used to feel at the end of a day’s writing and looked down at the strange, unfamiliar words on the page.